Sometimes, an automaker will launch a model and quickly realize it’s not worth any more investment. Maybe it was a stopgap solution to plug a hole in a model lineup using an existing car, or to placate a dealer network that feels it’s been missing out on a key product. Sometimes, there doesn’t even seem to be any strategy to it at all: A car is launched and advertised, then unceremoniously dumped after just one model year. Today, let’s look at a few cars that disappeared after a short time on the market, and which you probably haven’t seen by the curbside in years. Maybe, you never saw any of them at all.

The 1977-only Cougar wagon has been covered on Curbside Classic before, thanks to a pristine Villager that makes the rounds at vintage car shows. For those unaware, Mercury rebodied its 1972-vintage Montego sedan and coupe for 1977 and applied the Cougar nameplate. The Montego wagon retained its sheetmetal but received the same front clip as the others (as well as the XR-7 coupe), becoming the first Cougar wagon.

It lasted a year. For whatever reason, the Cougar wagon and its LTD II wagon stablemate were axed. The smaller Fairmont/Zephyr wagons had just come on board so perhaps Ford didn’t see the need for its aging midsize wagon duo, even though the Cougar sedans and coupes would continue until 1979. The Cougar wagon, thus, is a rare cat and the sheer name debasement of the wagon experiment has meant these have virtually no following. Mercury, inexplicably, would reintroduce a Cougar wagon in 1982, and it too would last only a year.

There are so few Cougar wagons surviving because only 8,569 Cougar Villagers were produced. However, there was an even rarer Cougar for 1977: the base wagon. With only 4,951 produced, it’s almost mythical. The base wagon differed from the Villager in trim, with the former lacking the Villager’s wood-grain siding. Powertrains were the same, though, with your choice of 351 or 400 cubic inch V8s. By choosing the base wagon, you saved $259: MSRP was $5,104.

They didn’t even bother to put the base wagon in the 1977 Cougar brochures, and even the flossier Villager barely received acknowledgement. I thought the lesser wagon had been lost to antiquity until I stumbled across this example on Station Wagon Forums. I can’t verify if it is simply a Villager missing its wood-grain siding, but it seems likely that this is one of the last 1977 base wagons.

Photo courtesy of Classic Car Ads

A little bit more Google-fu reveals only images from that era: a couple of movie/TV stills from IMCDB, as well as this Canadian magazine ad. Otherwise, what few base wagons were made may as well be Mercury Tasmanian Tigers now.

Chrysler also experimented with a little name debasement of its own, and the result lasted just a year: the 1976 Dodge Charger hardtop and Charger Sport. The first Charger, launched in 1966, was simply a Coronet with a fastback; you could still get a Coronet coupe. This changed in 1971, when Dodge simplified matters: it was a Coronet sedan/wagon or a Charger coupe. The latter had a unique and beautiful body, and scarcely looked like a Coronet. Of course, the trend towards personal luxury coupes could not be properly addressed by the swoopy Charger, and 1975 would see a new body shared with the Chrysler Cordoba atop the existing platform. Mystifyingly, though, the very next year this new Charger “SE” would be joined by a cheaper Charger, differing only in grille from the new “small” Plymouth Fury.

The cheaper Charger would be known as simply Charger and Charger Sport, and they would reintroduce a six-cylinder engine option to the Charger – the venerable 225 cu. In. Slant Six – after a two-year absence. “Turn it on – it’ll do the same for you,” Dodge’s sales brochure implored. The interior as neither as plush as the SE’s nor the exterior as wild as the Daytona, but the new base Charger listed for $3,736, and the Sport with its slightly nicer trim and exterior mouldings was $4,025; this was still $700 cheaper than the SE. A 318 V8 was the only optional engine.

It’s fair to say the Cordoba absolutely annihilated the Charger SE in terms of sales. The best the latter could ever manage in a year was 42k units, while 150k Cordobas were produced in 1975 alone. But these cheaper Chargers couldn’t even best the slow-selling SE: just 22k units were produced for 1976. The experiment was over, and for 1977 the cheap Chargers would return but now wearing Monaco badges.

The Chevrolet Monza enjoys the distinction of being one of the few sub-compacts ever available with four, six and eight cylinder engines; the Monza was initially available with the short-lived 262 V8, as well as the Chevy 305 and a Chevy 350 in California. These big engines were so tightly-packed into the Monza’s tiny engine bay that you needed to loosen the engine mounts and raise the block to get to the rearmost spark plugs. Monzas were fairly successful for Chevrolet, selling at least 70k units a year from its 1975 debut until a final, extended 1980 model year. With the fuel crisis a fresh memory, Buick and Oldsmobile dealers (as well as Pontiac) wanted to get their hands on GM’s stylish new subcompact. But did you know that Oldsmobile’s version, the Starfire, also received an optional V8, as well as garish sport editions?

One would expect Pontiac to receive a V8 option, with its somewhat sporty image (although plenty of Sunbirds came with vinyl roofs and Iron Dukes), but Oldsmobile was a bit more of a surprise. It’s not that the idea of a sporty Oldsmobile was so incongruous–the 442 had been available for years, and it and the Omega SX were available with quite garish tape stripes–but rather, the Starfire had been launched as an economical option for Oldsmobile loyalists and it just hadn’t sold. It was the same story as the Skyhawk, which could sell only 25k units in a good year. The Starfire debuted for 1975, like the Monza, and sold 31k units. Sales would drop each year, except for a small spike in 1979.

As with most GM cars of the 1970s, the Starfire played musical engines. Initially only launched with the Buick 231 V6, 1977 saw the arrival of the revised “Dura-Built” Chevy 140 four. It was replaced in 1978 by the Pontiac’s 151 “Iron Duke”, and joined by the Chevy 305 2-bbl. The Starfire’s only V8 option would last just two model years, being axed for 1980 along with the other V8 H-Bodies to help meet CAFE standards (Ford would also axe the Pinto/Bobcat V6 for 1980 for the same reason). Interestingly, only the Chevy and Pontiac would receive the notchback; surprising, given Oldsmobile/Buick’s more upscale image. The Starfire and Skyhawk shared the same body as the Monza 2+2 but with different grilles, however both models received unique front fasciae for 1979.

Reports on the Starfire’s 0-60 time varied from 11 to 13 seconds, and the V8 only had 140hp and 240 ft-lbs. In contrast, the Iron Duke’s 0-60 was closer to 17 seconds, with 85hp and 123 ft-lbs. Still, you paid the price in fuel economy with the V8 and although there is no breakdown of Starfire production by engine, it’s likely the cheaper V6 outsold it: just 17k units were produced in 1978 and 20k units in 1979. This was despite Oldsmobile offering two sporty Starfires: the GT and the Firenza. The former added full gauges, tape stripes and a standard V6, while the latter added even more garish tape stripes, fender flares and a rear spoiler. Starfires, like their fellow GM H-Bodies, weren’t renowned for their durability or assembly quality and, being cheap cars new, the survival rate isn’t high. Although these V8 Starfires weren’t exactly rockets–in fact, they didn’t even use a Rocket V8–they may well have been all chewed up and spit out by enthusiastic drivers.

Curbsiders, had you forgotten these cars existed or did you never know? Did they all rust away in the mid-1980s, or have you seen one since?

70 Comments

I knew about the Cougar and owned a 77 Starfire. If all were as good as my Starfire I think I know why they only lasted a year or so. The Starfire is in the running for worst car ever (for me) and managed to sell a 78 Concord.

There were actually 3 Cougar wagons, Villager, Cougar and the Cougar S. The S model would appear to be the rarest, what with it’s it Checker taxi-like trim package.
Purdy, aint it? (2-door model shown)

Cougar, one of the few car nameplates that has graced pretty much every body style and both FWD and RWD platforms. I think I first noticed these late 70s Cougars on the tv show Eight is Enough as that family had a Cougar 4 door sedan…though for such a large family NOT the wagon.

I wasn’t aware that the Starfire carried 2 different 4 cylinder engines. I preferred the Pontiac Sunbird version of these cars. You almost never see them anymore, but I have seen a running/driving 70s Sunbird recently.

Good looking station wagon that Cougar was–I don’t remember any Olds versions of the H body around when I was a kid–maybe GM new what the name Firenza ment to Canadians or maybe Canadians remembered the original Firenzas and didn’t buy the new ones

The H-body Starfire was never sold in Canada? That seems very odd. As the Canadian market was typically more heavily slanted towards smaller/cheaper cars than the U.S. market was, if the Starfire was only going to appear in one of the two countries, you’d think it would be Canada, not the other way around.

Given that Chevrolet and Oldsmobile shared the same dealer network in Canada, did GM Canada feel that it was pointless to have the Monza and the Starfire sold by the same dealer network? Did Pontiac and Buick (who also shared a dealer network in Canada) likewise have only one Monza-bodied car between them?

Stephane is correct that the Starfire wasn’t sold in Canada. With the Chev-Olds dealer network, there was no need for the Olds version of the H-body. At Pontiac-Buick dealers, both the Skyhawk and Sunbird were offered. This was because the Sunbird wasn’t introduced until 1976, so the Skyhawk was unique for the 1975 model year, and the Sunbird was initially only available in the notchback body style, while the Skyhawk was hatch only. I’m not sure if the Skyhawk was available right to 1980, or if it was dropped after the Sunbird hatch was introduced.

The single mom across the street had one of the Cougar wagons when I was a teenager. She kept it for many years, which was a little odd since she worked in the finance department of the local Chevy dealer. Since I saw it every day throughout high school, I never really thought of them as rare. I had no idea they were only sold for one year.

I have a brand new, in the wrapper 1977 Cougar Wagon that I have had since 1977. It stays parked in its box. Matchbox of course.
Thanks for mentioning the Coronet/Fury cheap Charger, totally forgot that one.
I do remember trying to unsuccessfully sell an ugly brown auction bought 1979 V-6 Firenza with a nasty smell inside.

I was going to mention that much more popular version of the Cougar Villager, which certainly sold in the hundreds of thousands in its long lifespan, the Matchbox Lesney Superfast No. 74 version. It was one of my favorites as a child, still have it but in well battered and worn condition, along with a second that I bought off eBay about 10 years ago. I think they even re-released as part of some sort of vintage throwback recently, though I’m sure they weren’t made in England like the originals!

Kind of ironic that a vehicle that was such low production in reality due to unpopularity was the basis of a popular matchbox model. Also curious that the matchbox version was clearly called Cougar Villager, yet clearly had no fake-wood sides, painted or otherwise!

I had this as well, and still do, somewhere in a box! As a kid, I was annoyed that it did not have woodgrain siding, so made some for it from woodgrain-pattern Contact paper. Always liked that the tailgate would fold down.

Since there was this toy version, I didn’t realize until now that the actual car was only made for one year.

I had a Matchbox Mercury wagon, too, although I don’t think it was a Cougar…bigger and boxier, I think. It was a chartreuse-y green metallic, like the one on the far left of the three pictured together above. The interior plastic mold included a dog looking out the tailgate. I seem to recall it was a collie. Very cool.

During the mid-’70s I worked at Hertz in Denver and we always had lots of wagons in the fleet for ski trip travelers to Stapleton bound to Vail or Aspen.

The majority of wagons were full sized LTDs and there were a few Torinos and Montegos before ’77. For ’77 though Hertz ordered the same type of wagon fleet for Denver that had been the rule in previous years. There were about ten LTD II wagons and about five Cougar wagons. I remember a ’77 Cougar wagon in that bright green especially; it also had a green vinyl interior. All the LTD II and Cougar wagons were non-woodies with durable, tough vinyl interiors, hand crank windows and AM only radios.

There was an alternate process to unbolting the engine mounts and jacking up the V8 in a Chevrolet Monza to change the spark plugs. Some mechanics would take a circle cutter to the inner fender well and cut a hole in it. Others claimed you could bend the inner fender well with a big crowbar to gain a bit of handroom.

Already mentioned the Cougar Villager connection. As to the Starfire, I never noticed them when new (probably because they went out of production the year I was born) and had forgotten their existence until around 2003. One showed up at the university I worked at, a ’77 or ’78 GT, presumably owned by a student as it could usually be found parked near a dormitory. And it was in fantastic shape, bright yellow with black racing stripes, and some clearly non-original but tasteful modifications. It reminded me what a nice shape these fastback cars had, clearly inspired by the Ferrari Daytona. They may not have been high quality, or high performance, and I think the notchback Chevy/Pontiac versions were quite homely, but the fastbacks sure did look good.

How about the Grand Monarch Ghia? I believe they were made for only 2 model years, 1975 and 1976. It was probably discontinued in 1977 because the Lincoln Versailles was introduced to combat the hot selling Seville. I tried to find total production numbers online but was unsuccessful.

I never put together just how much the Cougar and Charger endeared such similar torture, both got moved onto a generic nondescript intermediate body within a year of each other(74 and 75), the 77-79 and 81-82 XR-7 was the “true” distinctive Cougar, while the Charger SE was the “true” distinctive Charger, and low and behold both names had the unfortunate pleasure of gracing crappy FWD sport compacts. Although the Charger was at least spared the wagon, as a Cougar enthusiast I feel it would be a public service to crush all but one Villager, just as a grim reminder of bad product planning for future generations.

Lots more one-year oddities if you think about it. How about the BMW L6, an uber-luxe version of the 635CSi with a *full* leather interior (headliner, door panels, dash pad, etc.) and the M6’s air dam? 1987 only. Chevelle SS Wagon? 1973 only.

1979/1980 Buick Riviera “S” Type with the turbo V-6, bucket seats/non-functioning console and rare charcoal dashboard without any woodgrain. The strangest thing about these were that the rest of the interior had the same woodgrain as the luxury model on the doors, door pull strap covers and speaker grilles which totally did not match the dashboard/sporty motiff of the “S” Type. My brother-in-law worked for a Buick dealer back then and had a customer nearly cancel their order when the car came in because they hated the non-matching dashboard. He said the dealer had to order the woodgrain dash panels and replace the charcoal ones to satisfy the customer. The one “S” Type that the dealer had ordered for their inventory sat for over a year because no one wanted the turbo V-6, my father included. Buick gave you the option of having either engine in either model at no additional cost. When he ordered my Mom’s 1979 Riv he made sure it had the 350 V-8 and not the turbo.

1977 Pontiac Ventura had a one-year only front, squarer than the ’75-6 but rounder than the Phoenix it was rebranded to for ’78, and could be had with an Iron Duke for that year only. No other division offered it in an RWD X-body.

Fun fact about the LTD II wagons – it, like the Cougar, used the rear fenders tooled up for the ’72 Mercury Montego rather than the creased Torino ones.

My uncle had one of those Firenzas, silver and black, just like in the pictures. My 8 year old self thought it was much more exciting than the ’79 Concord my dad had at the time. He didn’t keep it very long, however.

As for that Cougar, all I can say is that this is (sadly) the best looking Mercury midsize wagon of the entire 70s. Which is not saying much.

This piece reminds me that one of the few good things to come out of Chrysler in the mid 70s was the fact that there was not a Charger wagon. Had there been one, Chrysler would undoubtedly have offered it with a 3 on the tree and a slant six.

I know that most of you will find the Firenza/Starfire the favorite car of this piece. Not me, I would rather have either of the others, all day every day.

I’m a Cougar guy and I have to say, those Cougar station wagons were tanks! It was such a cynical design — trying to extend the Cougar cache/glamour to sedans and wagons for ’77, since Montegos had never sold well. Marketing at it’s worst. A guy in one of our Cougar clubs had a pristine dark green one as in the photo, though. It was loaded with just about every option and I have to say, would certainly have been attractive transportation back then. The Colony Park was even bigger!

We have recently had both a last-gen Saab 9-5 and a 9-4x in our shop for inspection. Very rare, both. IIRC the 9-4x in particular had production totals in the low 4-digits (like maybe 1-2k). I have seen 3, the one that was in for inspection, one I see regularly at my local Giant, and another I saw in NC in January. Will we have a post about them in 30 years? I should take pictures in preparation!

The only two cars we’re missing from Saab’s difficult “late period” are the handful of pre-production 9-5 SportCombis that managed to escape the jaws of death in Europe. One of those would be an incredible find.

And perhaps even more impressive would be one of the ZombieSaab 9-3s built by NEVS in 2013. Supposedly they were able to produce about 200 of them before running out of $$$. Saab is now once again dead as a doornail.

I can honestly say that I don’t ever remember seeing any one of these cars. The Cougar Wagon I could have seen hundreds of times and not realized it, as most ’70s Fords look identical to me at a glance. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around why that car existed. I can definitely get into the unique green Villager that was featured on CC, though. That’s a pretty cool, albeit ridiculous, looking car.

The Starfire is the only one I’ve actively wanted to see, along with the Buick and Pontiac versions of the H-body, but I’ve never come across any of them. Aside from the horrendous quality control/rust/general apathy that damned these cars into oblivion, I think GM would have done much better with the B-O-P variants had they positioned them with more standard equipment than a Monza. They were basically all the same exact thing on paper, so it didn’t make a ton of sense to splurge for anything but the Chevy. The wild graphics and optioned-out cars in the brochures make them look ’70s radical, but I’m sure that just like the J-bodies of my youth, most of the cars that actually made it out onto the street were barely discernible from one another. Why bother?

the cougar wagon I remember.
all I remember about the starfire is a 1970’s road test article that showed the chrome as contact paper…and wrinkled contact paper at that! I did own a 78 buick Skyhawk though that was a really nice car. I stupidly traded it for a low mileage 78 cordoba after a few weeks. there was nothing wrong with the Skyhawk, I just was always a sucker for cordobas.
speaking of which the 76 charger/coronet/fury (WHATEVER) leaves me rather speechless! I was a big mopar fan growing up and the biggest (and only) dealership in the town I went to high school was mopar so how did I not even know these cars existed?? I remember going down that year to check out the charger se and cordoba but no clue on that one. maybe American only?
I thought we Canadians were the only ones that did weird mopars!

It’s too bad FoMoCo didn’t give the Cougar and LTD II wagons the crisp styling of their coupe and sedan brethren. I wondered if sales suffered because they were carrying around the plodgy, dated Montego/Torino styling?

I really love that Cougar Villager wagon in green with the woodgrain trim, square headlights and Lincoln-style grille – yum! I was 13 when these were new. I remember seeing the odd one at the local Lincoln-Mercury dealer but few on the roads. They were about as rare as the Lincoln Versailles.

I recall seeing one of these Cougars once, many years ago. I have a green matchbox one as well as a ‘junkyard’ one and there’s another i buried somewhere in our backyard many years ago for some reason.

I have been an avid car watcher my whole life and I don’t remember that ’76 Charger. What a sad comedown for the great Charger, especially after the appearance of the Chardoba a year earlier. Reflecting on what the Charger, Fury, and Sport Fury had been just 4 years earlier, I shudder.

I still occasionally see a ’77 Cougar Villager wagon driving around town and I’ve only seen a few of these cars around from the 1980’s onward till today, I thought Mercury did a better job with the headlights on the Cougar than Ford did with the LTD II (the stacked headlights on the Ford LTD II looked awful on the wagon), I know these cars can easily be mistaken for a Torino/Montego if you look it at right from the behind

I agree the notchback version’s of the H cars should have been available on the Starfire and Skyhawk instead of the Monza/Sunbird, the Skyhawk was built all the way into the 1980 model year.

I used to work for Hertz in the summers of 1977 and 1978 as a transporter (we were the ones who moved one way rental cars back to their originating locations). We would usually get a spacious vehicle to ferry several drivers to the pickup locations (there would often be several, often geographically dispersed) and all drive back to our home location, including the driver of the ferrying car. Being still a teenager at the time, I remember getting extra scrutiny crossing the border from Canada into the US even back then (mostly had me opening the trunk) since we were driving late model cars at a pretty young age, must have fit a profile they were looking for, since they didn’t seem to do it when I was travelling with my parents even if I was driving at the time.

Being Hertz, which at that time still rented out mostly Ford cars, most of the time I remember our location had LTDIIs, also quite a few Granadas and Fairmonts in 78, but also remember one of our ferrying vehicles for large number of car pickups would be a wagon, and one of them was a Mercury Cougar wagon, without the woodgrain trim (all green, of course). The idea of a Cougar wagon seemed ridiculous especially then, since in the 10 years that Cougars had been around they were always sporty 2 door cars, but much like Oldsmobile was trumpting the Cutlass label, Mercury thought Cougar was a good brand name…I remember pictures of cougars on the hubcaps, hood ornament, and other places where the figure of Mercury used to reside on earlier cars. I guess I never knew how rare this car would end up being at that time…I also remember driving a period Dodge Magnum, which also was only sold a couple of years and didn’t sell that much volume so is pretty rare now too.

1. Avid car freak (especially coming of age in the ’70s) – I never knew about the Charger! Clean design though.

2. I love the Cougar wagon! The name has been on everything/anything as has been pointed out. They should have done a fresh Cougar on the new Mustang chassis in 2005…not that it would have saved Mercury, but they could have gone more “sporting luxury”.

I’d say the Mustang has been in that class for some time. Like most current value brand cars all of the “luxuries” of the 60s that were either standard or exclusive to Cougars are now standard on Mustangs, and then some.

CORRECTION: In 1975, two distinct Chrysler B coupes were introduced: a premium B coupe for the all-new Cordoba and Charger Special Edition, and a basic B coupe for the new, smaller Fury coupe (the Satellite died after ’74) AND new Coronet coupe. The 1976 Charger/Charger Sport was a rebadging of the preceding year’s Coronet coupe, not an all-new model